The Commissions of the Danube River were authorized by the Treaty of Paris (1856) after the close of the Crimean War. One of these international commissions, the most successful, was the European Commission of the Danube, or, in French, Commission European du Danube, the CED, which had authority over the three mouths of the river the Chilia in the north, the Sulina in the middle, and the St. George in the south and which was originally designed to last for only two years. Instead, it lasted eighty-two years. A separate commission, the International Danube Commission, or IDC, was authorized to control commerce and improvements upriver beyond the Danube Delta and was supposed to be permanent, but it was not formally organized until after 1918.

International stature
The European Commission of the Danube was the first and for a long time the only international body to have serious police and juridical powers over private vessels and individual people, and it was seen in 1930, for example, by history professor Glen A. Blackburn of the United States as a "unique" organization.

Without territorial possessions, it is nevertheless a distinct international entity, possessing sovereignty over the broad waters of the Danube. . . . These entirely discretionary functions need the sanction of no group of nations, and there is no appeal from the edicts of the Commission.

The lower section of the Danube, he continued, was "more than an internationalized river" because the CED wielded independent administrative powers. He concluded that the commission:

falls short of being a bona fide member of the family of nations because its existence is largely de facto and not de jure. . . . It is safe to predict that the need for protecting the integrity of the commission will some day lift it out of the twilight of statehood and accord it full membership in the League of Nations.

To the contrary, Joseph L. Kunz, a professor of international law at the University of Toledo in Ohio, wrote in 1945 that international river commissions were organized on the collegiate principle, composed of "persons appointed by the contracting states, representing them and having to act in conformity with the instructions of their states." They were, he concluded, objects, not subjects, of international law.

Stanford University history professor Edward Krehbiel suggested in 1918 that other "international administrative agents" like the Danube Commission would eventually be created to handle specific problems. Their activities would "develop a whole body of rules which will in effect be the foundation of the super-state itself." The commission, he said:

offers an organ through which nations can approach one another on the basis of common or united action, instead of as rivals, as is the case in an ambassadorial conference.

In regard to the CED, he noted that the tariffs were to be settled by a majority vote of the commissioners and that "Majority rule results in making law for the minority, and . . . it therefore represents a truly profound abasement of national sovereignty."

The establishments of the CED were guaranteed to be neutral (promulgated in 1865) and free of the restraints of the territorial authorities. It owned and operated a hospital for seamen of all countries, and it flew a flag ("composed of five parallel strips . . . arranged in the following order of colour: red, white, blue, white, and red, the blue strip having a height double that of each of the other strips, and bearing in white the letters 'C.E.D.' ")

1919 Treaty of Versailles grants four rivers including the Danube "international" status

1921 European Commission of the Danube resumes operations; new International Commission of the Danube set up for the "fluvial" river from Ulm to Braila

World War I
The European Commission of the Danube, the CED, continued functioning during at least the first two years of the war. For a long time the Allied and enemy delegates actually sat on it together. When Germany attacked Romania in 1916, the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey) kept the commission in operation for a short time but without the British and the French.

Indeed, the Germans attempted to legalize a commission that would have perpetually excluded the Allied powers. on May 7, 1918, they concluded a separate peace with the Romanians, changing the EDC into a Commission of the Mouth of the Danube; its competence was maintained, but membership was restricted only to Danubian or Black Sea countries; above Braila control was "to be in the hands of the countries bordering the river", that is, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Austria, and Germany. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Rumania obtained the right to keep warships on the river; this led, as a reaction, to internationalization of the river between Ulm and the Black Sea after the war. The same stipulations were included in the peace treaty between Germany and Russia in 1918.

These treaties were negated upon Allied victory. In November 1918 the victors established a Commandement de la Navigation du Danube, with Sir Ernest Troubridge as commander. The Allies' Supreme Committee decided on May 22, 1919, that "despite the existing uncertainty concerning the frontiers and the ownership of the floating material, normal conditions of traffic on the Danube should be established as soon as possible." An Inter-Allied Danube Commission was formed under Troubridge. Later in the year, non-enemy states were admitted in equality with the great powers; the group met with some success in reopening the river, despite the difficulties.

Peace treaties imposed by the Allies set up new regulations for the river: The old European Commission resumed its power over the mouths of the river, but its membership was "temporarily" limited to Britain, France, Italy, and Romania (excluding, then, Russia and Turkey). In addition, an International Commission was thenceforth to regulate traffic on the Upper Danube from Ulm to Braila. A general conference was planned for the future.

Reorganizing
The conference convened in Paris in September 1920 to draw up a definitive statute for the river. Represented were Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and Yugoslavia, Absent from a full-dress Danubian conference for the first time were Russia, then in the first years of rule by the Bolsheviks, and Turkey. It took six months, but on July 23, 1921, the basic convention was signed. It followed to a large extent the temporary framework built just after the war. The European Commission of the Danube was re-established, and all the old treaties and regulations were confirmed.

The International Danube Commission (upriver) was finally given a permanent status, made a subject of international law like the EDC, and provided with regulations that gave it life. It, however, had no law courts of its own; it was obliged to surrender transgressors to the territorial authorities for trial and punishment. Members included all the riparian states, as well as Great Britain, France, Italy, and Romania.

Otto Popper of Bratislava, secretary of the IDC in 1920-29, said this about the statute when viewing it twenty years later:

Unfortunately this fundamental document was drafted during a period when much of the original spirit of [President Woodrow] Wilson's Fourteen Points was beginning to fade. As it stands the Statute is a somewhat unsatisfactory compromise between broad conceptions and narrow-mindedness. Its text gave rise to varying interpretations[,] and some of its important stipulations were therefore not applied, as had been hoped, in the best interests of the river and of its navigation.

John C. Campbell, Eastern European specialist with the U.S. State Department, wrote in 1949 that just as the Paris conference in 1856, had striven to block "Russian domination" in Southeastern Europe after the Crimean War, so the 1921 convention "stood for an effort to block the resurgence of German or Russian power."

Reconstruction
The European Commission, again ensconced in its quarters at Galatz, found things very bad indeed at the mouths of the Danube after the war. Silt had choked the channel again, and it seemed as though attempts to improve the situation was continually going awry.

Economic affairs along the entire river were so bad that the League of Nations instituted in 1922 an inquiry by a special committee, headed by an American, Walker D. Hines (Wilson's wartime chief of railroads). His report was issued in August 1925, stating that the river fleet carried 25 percent more tonnage than before the war, but traffic was only 56 percent of normal. This reduction was largely due to an economic depression but also by the breakup of Austria-Hungary's large duty-free area. Hines scored the "petty attitudes" of the multitude of free governments and complained of the frontier formalities and the exclusion of non-nationals from international trade. Despite the existence of the EDC and the IDC, the situation had "changed but little since the end of the war."

This report led the Commercial and Financial Chronicle of New York City to suggest, in particular, the reduction of "dues which it [the EDC] has imposed." British interests since 1918 had turned the Danube into a virtual European Thames. Before the war, reported Clair Price of the New York Times,

The Danube was in the hands of riverain [river-bordering] groups, but since then Furness, Withy and Co., large United Kingdom shipholders, have obtained a virtual monopoly. . . . It operates a steamer service from British ports to the Levant [Eastern Mediterranean], the Black Sea and to Sulina, Galatz and Braila, where British tonnage has long been preponderant.

The company had obtained this monopoly by refinancing the war-stricken prewar firms, most of which were owned by Austrian or Hungarian interests (the losers in the war). A holding company, the Danube Navigation Co., was organized, and astute financial maneuvering gave to Furness, Withy "the practical control of the traffic of the navigable length of the Danube."

The Danube is the second longest river in Europe. It is formed by two headstreams (each about 25 miles long), the Brigach River and Brege River, which rise in the Black Forest in Germany and unite below Donaueschingen only 20 miles await from Schaffhausen on the Rhine. Thereafter, it enters the Black Sea in a wide, marshy delta.

Entering Germany, it flows through Wattemberg, past Ulm, and enters Austria, continues through Upper and Lower Austria. Near Vienna it forms a short frontier, and a longer frontier between Austria and Czechoslovakia. It passes Hungary (KomÆ’ ¡rno), Budapest and enters Yugoslavia, past Novi Sad, Belgradee, then reaches Romania, enters the great Walachian plain and forms most of the Rumanian-Bulgarian border. Below Galati (Romania) it receives the Prut River at the border of the Ukraine. Near Tulcea it forms three main arms: the Kilija, the Sulina and the St. George. The Sulina, the central arm of the delta, enters the Black Sea at town of Sulina.

Facts
Under the Treaty of Paris of 1856, the Danube was subjected to an international regime which applied the principles of river law embodied in the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna in 1815. By the Treaty of Paris of 1856, two Commissions were established: a permanent riparian Commission (which never actually became operative), and a European Commission as a temporary technical body. The powers of the European Commission were extended to the Romanian seaport of Galatz, a seat being granted to that country by the Treaty of Berlin of 1878.

The Treaty of London of 1883 extended this jurisdiction to Braila, another port in Romania; but Romania had not signed this Treaty. The Treaty of Versailles of 1919 declared the Danube an international river from Ulm to the sea and confirmed the jurisdiction of the European Commission in the powers vested in it before the war.

This Commission consisted of representatives of Great Britain, France, Italy and Romania.

The Definitive Statute of the Danube was signed on 23 July 1921 at an international conference meeting in Paris.

Danube Names and etymology

The name Danuvius is presumably a loan from a Scythian language, or possibly Gaulish. It is one of a number of river names derived from a Proto-Indo-European language word *d nu, apparently a term for "river", but possibly also of a primeval cosmic river, and of a Vedic river goddess (see Danu), perhaps from a root *d "to flow/swift, rapid, violent, undisciplined." Other river names with the same etymology include Don, Donets, Dnieper and Dniestr. Dniepr (pre-Slavic Danapir by Gothic historian Jordanes) and Dniestr, from Danapris and Danastius, are presumed from Scythian Iranian *D nu apara "river afar" and *D nu nazdya- "river near", respectively.

The Danube was known in Latin as Danubius, Danuvius, Ister, in Ancient Greek (Istros). The Dacian/Thracian name was Donaris/Donaris  and Istros (lower Danube). Its Thraco-Phrygian name was Matoas, "the bringer of luck". The Ancient Greek Istros was a borrowing from Thracian/Dacian meaning "strong, swift", akin to Sanskrit ia¹£iras "swift".

Since the Norman conquest of England, the English language has used the Latin-derived word Danube.

In the languages of the modern countries through which the river flows, it is:

Bulgarian: pronounced ['dunEf] (transliterated: Dunav)

Croatian: Dunav

German: Donau 

Hungarian: Duna 

Romanian: Dun ƒrea 

Serbian: Dunav, 

Slovak: Dunaj

Ukrainian: Dunai